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The 5/6-ish Passes , Mt Aspiring

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Date: 21st February to 1st March 2016

Location: Mt Aspiring National Park

Trip Leader: Matthew Battley

Trampers: Sach Knight, Hamish Buckley, Tom Goodman, Sam Lancaster-Robertson and Sir Not-ap pearing-in-this-story


‘twas the week before Uni and all through the hills

Not a (sensible) creature was stirring, not even ones with a bill;

The socks were hung by the rock window to dry, In hope that the water would soon cease to fly.

The trampers were nestled all snug in their biv,

While visions of passes danced in their heads;

The weather was shocking, just for a change,

There was little hope for ascending the range.

As Kea complained and Hidden Falls Creek rose,

The trampers huddled ‘neath a rock with peanut butter on their nose(s).

But how did we get here? How did we get out?                    

Sit back and relax – that’s what this story is about:        

                     

Day 1: Queenstown – Sugarloaf Pass – Rockburn Shelter

Pausing only briefly to intercept Sir Not-appearing-in-this-story at the airport, those of us who flew down from Auckland early in the morning quickly picked up the peanut-butter machines Sach and Hamish (who had already spent ~3 weeks tramping near the area) from Queenstown and caught the shuttle to the Routeburn Shelter.


Thankfully although we started with the army of tourists on the Routeburn we turned off the Great Walk less than 1km in to begin the climb up the first of our 5-ish passes: Sugar Loaf pass. Stopping most of the way up for a bite of lunch, Hamish cleverly lightened his pack by losing his fork, and thus had to eat with sticks for the remainder of the trip. Reaching the top of the pass we gained our first view into the Rockburn Valley, and captured the first of our pass selfies with the aid of some sugar and the bread for the 1st night.


Like the climb, the descent didn’t mess around, so we lost 350m in the bush from the 1154m pass in fairly short order. We were however surprised how long the remainder of the track took down to the shelter, though happily still arrived before dark for a feast of roast chicken, bread and veges. A superb moon-rise over Mt Earnslaw followed as we gratefully retreated to our tents.


Day 2: Rockburn Shelter – Beans Burn – Split Rock Bivvy

We had a comparatively flat Day 2, starting only 460m below our goal.  Beginning with a very pleasant womble North on the true right of the Dart river, we waved to richer people in their fancy jetboats and eventually found ourselves at the bottom of the Beans Burn Valley. A goblin forest greeted us as we began the steady climb through the archetypical South Island beech, filled with curious robins, almost curious enough to eat peanut butter off Sach’s spork. The track up to the main clearing was well marked and seemingly quite well  marked and seemingly quite well trodden, spitting us out into an absolute gem of a view up the valley towards Poseidon Peak.


Following this clearing (which is a superb lunch spot), the track gradually disappeared, though realistically there was quite a decent ground trail until much further up the valley. As we climbed, robins and bush gave way to more open rocky/shrubby land, with numerous waterfalls becoming apparent to the East below Cosmos peak. Such bodies of water coupled with finding an excellent swimming hole in the river saw somehow persuaded us that swimming was a good idea, despite the fact that it was glacier fed. Needless to say, the swim was somewhat short-lived.


A combination of rock-hopping and tussock-bashing led to our final destination for the day – Split Rock Bivvy - the first of the rock bivvies on our trip. The rock field in which it was situated wasn’t hard to find, however upon closer inspection the actual bivvy proved somewhat elusive. As it turned out the entrance was to the North of the ‘split rock’ and so, as darkness fell, we uncovered our mansion – two connected large rooms coupled with all number of nooks and crannies. This 5-star accommodation also included a cooking platform, quaint pebble wall and handy water source. Pasta lovingly crafted by our sous-chef San Remo made an appearance with bacon this night, before we hit the hay (quite literally – it really was 5-star).


Day 3:  Split Rock Bivvy – Fohn Saddle/Lakes – Olivine Ledge

Regretfully leaving our four-poster beds behind, Day 3 began much as the last day had finished, with a combination of rock hopping, chilly river crossings and shrubbery as we found our way almost to the top of the valley. Ducking off to the true right of the Beans burn higher up, the relatively mild valley gradient gave way to a gloriously steep climb up to the 1506m Fohn Saddle, with superb views back down the valley. Most routes up are as ‘easy’ as the others in the vicinity of the saddle, but the official route heads up a rock gut to begin, with the odd cairn to guide the way.


Upon cresting the saddle and being rewarded with our first view of the Olivine wilderness area, we decided it was high time for both another summit selfie (finding reception with our fohns) and lunch (where Hamish and Sach pulled out beer and bow-ties in a show of true class). A giant boulder field paved our way to Fohn Lakes, as we looked towards the red-rocked Sunset Peak and we discovered that staying high until you are just to the West of Mt Fohn helps to avoid hidden bluffs. Crossing the main divide did however have the traditional effect of worsening the weather, so as we descended to the larger Fohn Lake the clouds began to encroach. Following the guidance of Moir, we crossed the outlet of the greater Fohn Lake in order to descend, at which time Tom decided he was fed up with his boots and instead began descending over the dolerite desert in his jandals.

Unattributed tramper: “No matter which way I turn, I’m bumming someone”
Unattributed tramper: “No matter which way I turn, I’m bumming someone”

As we dropped further into the proto-valley we noted some intriguing holes in the cliffs where parts of the mountains in the form of huge boulders appeared to have fallen off the walls, hinting at the power hidden in the formation and evolution of the Main Divide. From here, we followed to the true right of the steadily filling stream, finding ourselves quickly onto the Olivine Ledge.

A short wander North along the ledge deposited us in another rock garden, with this bivvy thankfully less hidden than the last. This Olivine Ledge biv was quite a different piece of accommodation to Split Rock, about sitting-height or less high inside of the ‘atrium’. However it was cosy enough given the increasingly heavy rain outside, if you excused the slight leaks.


Day 4: Olivine Ledge – Fiery Col – Cow Saddle – Hidden Falls Creek


“Most unpleasant” is about the nicest any of us could say of this day. I don’t recall that it stopped raining even once. However, there were a couple of interesting passes.


Starting from our drippy hole in the ground, we poked our noses out into the rain on Olivine Ledge. We proceeded to follow this ledge South-West, slowly climbing above the Fiery creek cliffs (with only a mild ‘scenic detour’ thanks to the variable visibility). Crossing at the fork, we then followed between the two Fiery Creek tributaries onto the increasingly red rocks from which Fiery Col draws its name.


Despite the slight feeling of déjà-vu Tom felt climbing over large loose rocks, Tom thankfully refrained from breaking his leg this time, and we found our way onto the top of Fiery Col in the middle of a cloud. Stopping for only long enough to pull out a lighter for our third pass-selfie, we quickly descended down the other equally red side of Fiery Col. Somewhat surprisingly, the cairned route then took us down the steep stream gully for a short time, before taking us out to a more gradual descent to Cow Saddle.


Cow Saddle marks the start of both the Olivine River (heading North) and Hidden Falls Creek (heading South), and I managed to ‘gracefully’ face-plant in them both. We embraced our inner cows at Cow Saddle proper, taking a minute to eat grass on all fours, before racing down on the true left of the beginnings of Hidden Falls Creek.


We were originally planning to camp near the bottom of Park Pass, partway down Hidden Falls creek, but feeling completely drenched we elected to first investigate the nearby rock bivvy just in case. We didn’t hold out huge amounts of hope for this bivvy as according to Moir’s Guide it was “now largely filled with avalanche debris, and would need considerable digging to make it inhabitable again”. However, miraculously upon arriving there, we discovered that some kind souls had evidently begun the excavation in the past, leaving room for 3, or a tight 4. Being a party of 5 in serious want of some dryness, we thus elected to spend the evening digging and interior designing, extending the floor, throwing rocks around like cavemen and digging out a higher sleeping platform. By the end of the day it was in a state which would happily sleep 6.

Selfie Time!


Day 5: Hidden Falls Creek


The previous day’s miserable weather got even more miserable on Day 5, causing the usually serene section of Hidden Falls Creek below us to completely flood its banks. It was clear that we weren’t going to go anywhere, so we settled in for a day of cards, re-explaining the rules of Balboa (many times), eating, sleeping and generally watching the rain pour down. After our hard excavation work of the day before we had a surprisingly comfortable spot in the Biv, even with a built in water feature. Probably the most exciting occurrences for the day were the thunderstorm-adventures, or to quote Sach’s journal - “All of us went for a dramatic shit today” – literary genius, Sach Knight 2016.


Day 6: Hidden Falls Creek – Park Pass – Head of the Rockburn Valley


As the weather started to slowly improve, we observed that the flooded torrent of a river from the day before had returned to a more creek-like appearance, and hence we elected to make a break from our hole-in-a-rock to Park Pass. There’s a reasonably cairned ground trail down the first part of Hidden Falls Creek, just with the odd hairy section depending how high the river is when you need to cross it.

One must be wearier than us when getting closer to Park Pass however, as after hearing that there was a reasonable track up to Park Pass from the valley floor we managed to take one track too early and had to bush bash for a kilometer or so to regain the track proper. We were quite happy when it did eventually appear, as we didn’t altogether fancy missing it and being stuck in the lower reaches of Hidden Falls Creek, as apparently these are dense enough to hide helicopters.

 

Sam: “Is your trowel from Macpac?”

Tom: “I don’t know”

Sam: “Well it has Macpac written on it”

Tom: “Well I guess it’s from Macpac then”

“Er, guys....what’s going on?”.


The real track was indeed pleasantly easy to follow compared to what we had grown used to of late, and so we sped up the gloriously steep climb to the clearing, beginning about 100m below the 1176m Park Pass. What we hadn’t quite realised during the climb through the bush was just how ridiculously windy it was up near the pass. Gale-force winds greeted us upon clearing the bush, so we were very glad that the main pass was nice and wide/difficult to fall off. Parking our pack-car behind a rock for our final pass-selfie, Tom eloquently summed up our group feeling in his video – “So ah, this is everyone at Park Pass, and how are we feeling... [inaudible yet sarcastic replies from everyone else thanks to the wind]... And I’m feeling fucking shit!!”

 

After throwing more expletives to the wind, we made a break for the Park Pass bivvy, partway down to the upper Rockburn valley floor. When Moir’s described it as “rather exposed from the South” we were somewhat bemused to discover that it actually meant “this bivvy is quite literally a massive boulder on a lean which you can sort of hide under provided the wind isn’t blowing the storm right in from the South”. We ended up snuggling 5 people under an Olympus tent fly within the bivvy in order to stay dry.

Sach feeding the locals. (Spot Hamish)

Hidden Fall’s Creek Bivvy.


Day 7: Head of the Rockburn Valley with a side-trip to Park Pass Glacier


Sach: “HOW IS THE WEATHER STILL SHIT?”


Despite grand plans of carrying on to Nerine Lakes and eventually dropping down into the North Branch of the Routeburn via North Col, it was inherently clear that the weather was not going to play ball on this day, so we’d have to sit tight. Much like our previous rest day, we spent most of the morning resting, eating and playing cards (/explaining the rules of Balboa again).


Here and there the rain would briefly stop, so we’d go out and climb some of the boulders or look at the waterfall, but by lunchtime Sam and I were going pretty stir-crazy. However, there was a remedy to such a malady as the Park Pass glacier was only about 2km away and 600m above us! Leaving the decidedly less keen folks behind, the two of us ascended the dramatic spur above Park Pass and emerged over the top of the 1588 peak, gifting us an incredible view of the glacier and its terminal lake. Thanks to the summer heat and other environmental factors, it had retreated about 1km from its marked position on the map, so we decided to wander a bit further for a closer look, eventually getting up right beside the edge of the glacier and peering into its blue depths. A rare burst of sunshine and blue sky snuck through the clouds for a minute or two as we admired the glacier, which gave us a brief respite from the chilly wind. However, once that once again retreated we followed suit, following a handy route around the North of the 1588m peak, and back down the spur to our sleepy comrades. Such a brief adventure was sufficient to rid Sam and me of our stir-craziness, thus leaving us only as crazy as the rest of the group.


Discussing the options for the remainder of the trip that night, we came to the decision that even with the possibility of comparatively nicer weather on Day 8, it was unlikely that the slippery snow-grass along the reasonably steep ridge to Nerine Lakes would dry sufficiently for us to complete the original route (especially given Moir’s warning against attempting it in the wet). Thus we decided that we’d escape down the Rockburn Valley instead, which had been luckily also recommended as a beautiful valley. Rest assured Nerine Lakes, you haven’t yet escaped – we’ll be back!

Chillin’ in Hidden Fall’s Bivouac - Photograpy by Hamish Buckley


Day 8: Rockburn Valley – Sugarloaf Pass (again) - Queenstown


As luck would have it, the sun FINALLY decided to show its face again on the final day of the trip, after another thoroughly impressive thunderstorm echoed through the valley overnight. A wellmarked ground trail began from less than 1km down from the bivvy, so the going was reasonably easy. Halfway across the bush saddle before Theatre Flat, we came across a very odd sight – other people! As we’d last seen people halfway up the Beansburn (Day 2), I think we may have talked the ears off this group before wishing them better weather than we’d had.


We stopped for a snack/power-nap in the sun at Theatre flat, and looked around for the rumoured swing. It wasn’t immediately apparent at first, but we eventually spied it on the Eastern Side of one of the larger groves of trees. Hamish gave it a try and awarded it his seal of approval. At the Eastern end of Theatre flat, some more people appeared, disgorged from another odd occurrence – a maintained DoC track! From here the walk was a breeze – a reasonably gradual descent through the Rockburn valley with a handy skinny-dipping spot in the river halfway down.


Only one obstacle remained between us and civilisation: our old friend, Sugarloaf Pass. Our final challenge was a battle with the reception-gods from the saddle, as we attempted to get the shuttle to pick us up a day early. Not knowing whether the message had got through quickly we raced down, knowing that the last usual pick-up time was 4pm, which was looking disturbingly close. We had a promising sign on our descent however, as passing our lunch spot from Day 1, lo and behold, there was Hamish’s fork! Miraculously our correspondence had made it through to Queenstown, though we didn’t find this out until I had run 5km down the road towards Glenorchy to try to get some reception...

 

I’m fairly confident that we all smelt like animals on the way back to Queenstown, but the Shuttle driver was kind enough not to say so. Our accommodation for the night was a handy-dandy freedom camping spot outside Queenstown itself, as scoped out by Sach and Hamish after their trip directly before. It was a superb spot, right on the beach, and only slightly prone to having waves break onto tents when the wind-generated ‘tide’ came in...

 

So, what does one conclude about a trip like this? Great company, great scenery, fantastic passes and 5/8 days of absolutely crap weather – guess it must be tramping in the Southern Alps.


Hamish: “I was good on the stripper pole,

I could jump up and spin around,

but I was told my best fea-ture was my eye contact”


Author: Matthew Battley                                             

Rockburn Valley at Dawn.

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